Watercolour painting

Not a brilliant photo - sorry, it's from my phone. It's a jug of stocks on a table with a patterned cloth, against a lace curtain. You can see that the silk is stretched over a frame and secured with special pins.

You will find lots of excellent lessons on youtube.

Sorry! Can't upload the picture from my gallery, but if I've understood correctly you can access there.

I began painting on silk and I love it. There are different approaches and you don't have to be able to draw to make effective patterns. Basically you stretch a piece of silk over a frame and using silk painting inks, you can make random patterns and add texture by sprinkling salt onto the image which will absorb some of the dye to make patterns.

I draw onto the silk with gutta, a kind of gel which creates areas which will contain the dyes and stop them from spreading. The picture can be as simple or complicated as you wish. As I'm a 'fiddler' I can spend hours on tiny details but it doesn't have to be so complicated.

The Great Painting Challenge (I think that's what it's called) is starting again tomorrow at 6 pm on BBC 1 if anybody's interested.

Yes, I'm so excited ,I'm planning to haul my art stuff out of the cupboard later today . It looks as if it's going to be a great inspirational series !

I shall certainly be watching. I really ought to do more painting - haven't done any for ages. Even when you are lacking inspiration, which I am most of the time these days, just putting a few washes on some paper and seeing where it leads you can be hugely satisfying.

I have all the equipment and have attended some classes in the past. So shall be watching and hope it inspires me. I can remember soending a whole day at a class -packed lunch- and can absolutely recommend it for stress relief and something that takes you out of yourself it was brilliant!!

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I started watercolour painting last autumn and love the challenge. I do try other mediums on occasion and also sketching to try and improve my overall technique. A very satisfying way of spending some spare time even if I'm not always satisfied with the results. Here are 2 of my watercolours including my first attempt as an animal

I used to do a lot of painting, mostly in acrylics and watercolour, although I have painted in oils which is different altogether. How do we upload our paintings/sketches? I cannot find out how to do it. I see you have managed it Lilylilo so maybe you could tell me how?

Love the paintings that have been put up on here. Would like to know how to do it.

Is it ok to talk about other kinds of painting, not just watercolour painting?

honeypot43 Love your picture with the butterfly and foxgloves (or are they penstemon?). So delicate.

Wish I knew how to upload paintings.

NotTooOld I know how you feel. I am just coming out of my block. I have started with sketching, but hope to progress to painting like I used to do.

At Art class we were asked to 'paint like the Masters'. We spent a whole term doing that and it was great fun. What you do is copy a small section of a famous artist's painting and see how difficult it is. You have to use the same pallet as much as you can but it produced some excellent results. I would like to show you one or two of those and one of my own style but I do not know how to upload them.

I'm still persevering with watercolours. Thanks to those who gave me advice last year on stretching paper. I'm having more success now - partly because I'm using better paper. I've got to the point now where, when I tried to return to acrylics I made a right hash of it, so I have to carry on!

I'm now experimenting with the wonders of salt and cling film. It's good fun. If I eventually succeed in being happy with anything I will post it. But so far I can't match anything on here!

I've used salt Nfk (and sugar) but where does the cling film come in, please?

Cling film wrinkles the colour up I can't think of another way to explain it

Some really lovely paintings on here, it's a great relaxing hobby. I do it occasionally for the enjoyment it gives, but am not very good.

Stretch the cling film across a wet wash and wrinkle it up, pull lines with the wrong end of the brush or scrumple it up and leave until just about dry. I'm getting better at it.

Now off to try sugar!

Greyduster, what you do is wet the paper with that white glue and then push it in to shapes with your fingers. I did this with shrubbery, but you can do it with flowers too to make them look embossed. When dry you paint over it. I did a little robin peeping out of the shrubbery. Looks really nice. I have also used brick dust to get texture, same method, paint thinly with the glue then sprinkle the brick dust over and allow to dry.

Something else you might like to try when painting silver birch trees. Draw them in quink ink, then run a wet brush along down the one side. The colour will leak across so only wet up to half way. Great affect.

Flowers can be made by sticking tissue paper on the paper and pushing it in to a flower shape. You can layer it until it stands out. Then paint it.

Fun, fun, fun!

Sorry Greyduster, I meant push the clingfilm around on the paste/glue then push it around with your fingers.

When making flowers with tissue paper you can always use coloured tissue paper instead of painting it.

Good Lord! Look at all the fun I've missed by being an (almost) purist all my painting life! I'll have to have a go at all of that.

I absolutely love watercolours. My main hobby and the only thing that I do where I find that I cant think about anything else son a total switch off from any stresses in other parts of my life

I find watercolours much harder than acrylics or oil. With the last two you can correct mistakes, not easy with watercolours because the paper is stained leaving a mark no matter how much you try and remove it. Also you have no control about where the colours run to. I know you have to leave lots of white spaces to make the painting glow with light.

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I prefer acrylics or 'painting' with dots. See below:

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Sorry, chose the wrong picture. These are dot pictures:

Some of you will recognise what one or two have been influenced by? We did an exercise in class where we had to copy a section of a famous artist's painting and another where we had to try the pallet or style of a famous artist. Hence the 'Van Gogh' look, and Pointillism as in Georges Seurat and Paul Signac. Great fun to do.

I have tried watercolours but I am not very good at it.